


Finding Seoul in Bangkok

by Stelra_Etnae



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: 2017-18 season, Canon Compliant, I started out wanting to write seungchuchu, M/M, Post-Canon, Slow Burn, it turned into a character study instead, rarepairsonice
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-18 14:27:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9389120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stelra_Etnae/pseuds/Stelra_Etnae
Summary: When Seung Gil decided to break things off with his coach at the end of the 2016-17 season and sign a contract with Celestino Cialdini, it was obviously because of the Italian man’s solid reputation as a coach. Not because of anything else. Seung Gil was a perfectly rational man who made perfectly rational choices.There was nothing rational, however, about the chaos of Bangkok and the warmth of Phichit Chulanont's smile. And in a way, maybe that was what he had needed all along.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Rare Pairs on Ice 2017 event on Tumblr, using the Day 5 prompt “Cultural Differences”.
> 
> Seungchuchu has been on my YOI pairs to-do list ever since I discovered the ship, and I’ve also been wanting to write a story about Seung Gil growing emotionally as a skater. So this story is really killing two birds with one stone and I couldn’t be happier.
> 
> My headcanon for Seung Gil is that he grew up as the only child in a typical Korean household with working parents. His parents don’t completely understand his skating but are supportive anyway in a slightly vague manner. During his high school days, he juggled skating with regular classes and cram school, doing well academically but never quite standing out. He runs his days according to a schedule he set up himself, all very punctual and orderly.
> 
> In contrast Phichit probably has a whole slew of siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents and extended family that he grew up close to and visits during holidays. There was never a quiet moment back home while growing up, and in a way the times he is on the ice are the only times he has to himself.
> 
> Besides exploring their developing relationship, the story will also focus largely on Seung Gil and Phichit's individual growths as skaters in the time leading up to the 2017-18 season and culminating in the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. So stay tuned!

The first thing Seung Gil experienced after entering the city was a traffic jam that took five hours to sludge through, and that derailed every semblance of a schedule he had planned for the day.

The second setback was being greeted at the address he’d been given not by his new coach as he had expected, but instead by none other than one Phichit Chulanont.

The Thai skater had been sitting on the tenement stairs fiddling with his phone, but he jumped to his feet with a bright smile the moment the taxi pulled up in front of the building, helping Seung Gil unload his luggage and even chattering a little with the taxi driver in Thai on the side while Seung Gil settled the payment.

As the taxi drove away, Seung Gil found his right hand immediately snatched up in a warm grip and shaken energetically.

“Seung Gil! Ciao Ciao told me you were arriving today so I’ve been waiting! Were you able to find this place okay? I’m Phichit, but you probably know that already, I remember we met at the Four Continents and Worlds but unfortunately we didn’t really get much chance to talk back then, I’m so happy that we’ll be training together this season! I’ve been wanting to get to know you better, we’re the same age after all.”

The tan-skinned youth ploughed through this entire spiel barely seeming to breath in-between, and it was all Seung Gil could do to nod mutely in response. Phichit picked up on it immediately, though perhaps not interpreting it completely accurately, and his eyes widened.

“Ah, what am I doing, you must be so tired from your trip! Come on, I’ll help you carry your luggage up to our room.” Phichit grabbed one of Seung Gil’s two check-in roller bags, turning back towards the stairs.

_Our_ room?

Seung Gil opened his mouth to ask, but Phichit was already halfway up the stairs. Frowning but pushing away his doubts for the moment, Seung Gil lifted up his remaining bag and climbed up after the other skater to the first landing. Phichit unlocked the second door down the communal hallway, pulling Seung Gil’s bag in through the doorway.

“The living room’s a little small, joined to the dining room and kitchen over there with basic appliances like a fridge and a stove. There’s air-conditioning though and because of the size it cools down pretty fast, which is great for the hotter months. The bathroom’s though this door, shower and toilet combined. And, this is our room! It’s a pretty basic flat, but I made sure to tidy things up before you arrived so that you’ll have space for your things.”

Seung Gil glanced around. The room was reasonably spacious and airy, at least, and furnished well with the basic necessities. The two sides of the room mirrored each other, each with a single bed, wardrobe, drawers-set and desk. That was where the similarities ended, though.

Phichit’s bed was covered in a colourful bedspread with multi-coloured circular patterns on a red background. There was a large movie poster for The King and Skater pasted on the wall at the foot of Phichit’s bed. A couple of framed photographs sat on top of the drawers-set and more pictures had been pinned all over the cork notice board. A few books had been stacked on the desk, along with a closed laptop and a few loose sheets of paper with scribbles over them. All of this lent a homely feel to the place.

In contrast the other side of the room was bare, but that was just to be expected. Seung Gil dropped his backpack onto the uncovered mattress, wheeling his luggage so that it sat out of the way at the foot of the bed. Overall it was a nice room, but…

Some of Seung Gil’s confusion, exacerbated by tiredness, must have shown in his expression, for a look of slight dismay crossed Phichit’s face.

“Ciao Ciao – ah, Celestino, I mean, but everyone here calls him Ciao Ciao so he won’t mind if you do too – _did_ tell you that we’ll be rooming together, right? I was rooming with one of the juniors before, but he moved out last month after deciding to study abroad. Ah, but if you really don’t like it we can tell Ciao Ciao and he should be able to find you a flat of your own but it’s quite late today already so we’ll have to wait until tomorrow if you really want to change rooms…”

Celestino _had_ mentioned that he’d arranged for Seung Gil to share a flat with Phichit, but it’d clearly slipped his mind to mention that they’d be staying in the same _room_. Seung Gil wasn’t sure what to think of it.

After a moment of silence, he realized that Phichit had trailed off and was looking at him expectantly and a little apprehensively.

He let out a sigh. Whatever, there was no point kicking up a fuss about something trivial like this. “It’s fine. I’ll stay here.”

The Thai skater looked relieved. “That’s great! I promise I’ll be a good roommate, I roomed with Yuuri – Yuuri Katsuki, you know, we were rink-mates back in Detroit – for five years and he never complained.” A thought occurred to the tanned youth then, and he glanced over at Seung Gil. “You aren’t allergic to hamsters, are you?” he asked. “Do you mind pets?”

When Seung Gil shook his head, Phichit let out a relieved sigh. “Thank goodness, I had to check. I’ve seen your photos of you and your dog on Instagram so I thought you probably like animals but allergies work in weird ways sometimes…”

Seung Gil blinked. Phichit followed him on Instagram? Honestly, he didn’t use it much beyond maybe one picture of Haru every odd month or so when he visited home. Given that he’d only opened the account the previous year, that amounted to, what, five posts in total?

Phichit had made a beeline for the cage at the foot of his bed as he spoke, and when he turned back to Seung Gil he had three hamsters in his hands, the small creatures sniffing the air curiously.

“This is Arthur, Mongkut and Chulalongkorn!” the Thai boy introduced with a bright grin.

Seung Gil stared. “They’re so small,” he said before he could think it through. He regretted it immediately, embarrassed by the spontaneity of his own words. But it was true, to his eyes. They were tiny, tinier than Haru had been even as a newborn pup.

Phichit understood right away. “Ah, your dog is really big, right? A husky. What’s its name?”

Seung Gil smiled a little nostalgically as he thought about his dog back home. He’d just arrived, and he missed him already. “Haru. His name is Haru.”

Phichit’s responding smile was dazzling. It was a little heady, to have the full force of that smile directed straight towards him. “I’d love to meet Haru someday too.”

“I’m sure he’ll like that.”

A low rumbling noise suddenly echoed through the dorm room. Seung Gil’s face heated up like fire when he realized that was the sound of his own stomach growling.

Phichit thankfully didn’t laugh, but his lips quirked up in a knowing grin. “Wanna go out for dinner?”

 

* * *

 

The Thai language was fast-paced and lilting, and the written script looped and curled in ways that were peculiar to his eyes, utterly different from Korean’s clean and ordered orthographic system.

The menu in his hands was completely incomprehensible, and the lack of accompanying pictures didn’t help one bit. Phichit didn’t seem to mind translating the menu items for him though, even cheerfully adding in a few recommendations when Seung Gil continued to look utterly lost.

In the end he settled for Tom Yum Goong, one of the few Thai dishes Seung Gil had actually tried in the past. The mix of sour and spiciness wasn’t dissimilar from the type of flavour commonly found in Korean dishes, and on this first night after everything that had happened before, he felt that something familiar wouldn’t hurt.

The soup, when it arrived, smelled wonderful and was accompanied by a bowl of steamed rice. Phichit himself had ordered some kind of stir-fried flat rice noodles which looked just as good. Seung Gil filed it away as one of the things he wanted to try some other day, though the tell-tale green strands of spring onions in it were a drawback.

Phichit whipped out his phone the moment the food was served to the table. “Let’s take a selfie! I’ll upload this on Insta, okay?”

At Seung Gil’s nod he tapped the upload button, typing in a caption as Seung Gil dug into his food, his hunger after the chaotic day finally catching up to him.

Later that night back in their dorm room, Seung Gil opened up his Instagram account as he towelled his hair dry after his shower. He could hear water running as Phichit took his turn in the bathroom.

 

**phichit+chu**

[image]

2,820 likes

**phichit+chu** with @seung-gillee in #bangkok #tomyumgoong #padthai

View all 385 comments

 

Most of the comments were in mixed Korean and English, some of his fans questioning if this was confirmation that he was now training under Cialdini, others commenting that the food looked delicious and that they both looked cute. Cute? He would never quite understand how their minds worked.

Should he post something? Nah, forget about it. They’d get the official confirmation about Celestino in an interview sooner or later. And probably unofficially from Phichit as well. It seemed like the other skater liked posting pictures and videos of the rink and his training.

He found himself scrolling through Phichit’s past posts after clicking follow on the Thai skater’s account. There were endless photos of Phichit with other skaters, and it seemed as if he had taken at least one photo with every active skater in existence.

He paused at a photo that he himself was in, a group selfie from after the awards ceremony at the Four Continents Championships that he remembered somehow getting dragged into by JJ. Phichit was in the front, with Yuuri who was smiling rather shyly as he held up his gold medal. Otabek stood stoically behind them with his silver while Leo and Guang Hong crowded in making peace signs, and further back he could see himself and JJ, the younger skater’s arm slung over his shoulders as he posed for the camera and him glaring daggers at the Canadian.

He screenshotted the picture, saving it into his phone. When he had to stop himself from yawning the third time in the span of one minute, he finally set his phone aside to blow-dry his hair. It had a tendency of turning into an uncontrollable bedhead the next morning that would persist the whole day if he didn’t dry it properly before sleeping.

Phichit emerged from the bathroom, wearing a matching pajamas set and a towel draped over his shoulders. Seung Gil yawned again as he kept his hair dryer away, eliciting a smile from the other youth.

“Are you sleeping soon? I’ll switch off the light if you are, I’ll just be using my phone for a bit longer.”

Seung Gil nodded and uttered a quiet thanks. Phichit flipped off the light switch once Seung Gil had climbed into bed, and then expertly navigated through the half-darkness back to his own bed. A bit of light still filtered in between the curtains from the street outside, along with the faint buzz of traffic. Seung Gil closed his eyes, finding the dull background noise strangely calming.

“Good night, Seung Gil,” Phichit called from the other side of the room.

Those simple words, so easily given, caught him off guard. How long had it been since he’d had someone say good night to him, outside of infrequent visits back to his family home? Seung Gil swallowed back a sudden, irrational lump in his throat.

“…Good night.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If Seung Gil was completely honest, his decision to contact Celestino had been an impulse entirely unlike his usual self.

**phichit+chu**

[image]

2,529 likes

 **phichit+chu** training! @seung-gillee is so serious, can’t get left behind!

View all 570 comments

 

* * *

 

Bangkok was chaotic and noisy, the roads dusty from the dry season and the air seeming to perpetually hold a faint smoky smell. Cars whizzed past endlessly as they stepped out of the apartment complex onto the busy main road. The flat he and Phichit shared was within easy walking distance to the rink, just two blocks away, making it simple to get there without having to worry about Bangkok’s morning traffic.

It had been arranged such that Seung Gil would have an early morning private training session with Celestino, before the coach’s novice class came in for their lesson. Phichit’s lesson was set in the afternoon, but the Thai skater insisted on showing him the way to the rink, saying that he wanted to get some morning practice in anyway.

In stark contrast to the endless buzz of traffic outside, the echoing quiet of the rink in the early hours before the recreational skaters arrived was like a familiar reprieve. Celestino greeted them with a cheerful smile and a warm handshake as they entered the rink. He and Seung Gil finalized the paperwork while Phichit took to the ice to warm up.

The mix-ups from the previous day aside, the Italian man was serious and firm when practice started, which Seung Gil could appreciate in a coach. After warm-up, he instructed Seung Gil work through a coordinated series of basic technical elements, starting with jumps and then moving into spins, spirals and steps. It was meant as an initial demonstration of his technical ability range, Seung Gil knew, familiar with the style many coaches adopted on the first lesson.

Well, if he was going to be assessed, he wasn’t about to let his new coach think he wasn’t serious.

 

* * *

 

**phichit+chu**

[video]

5,676 views

 **phichit+chu** omg #quadloop #seung-gillee #blessed

View all 438 comments

 

* * *

 

Celestino watched with a thoughtfully critical eye as Seung Gil executed a flying camel spin-basic sit spin-Biellmann spin combination. The 20-year-old Korean skater lacked the yielding flexibility of a younger skater or someone trained extensively in ballet, most evident in the Biellmann, and the transitions could be smoother, but there was a stability and controlled rotation to the spins that only came through focused practice. Given his aptitude for jumps, they probably wouldn’t go amiss with attempting to add a death drop spin to his repertoire at some point.

In truth, he’d been closely watching the Korean skater even before he’d received the frankly surprising email asking about his availability as a coach. Celestino had always liked to keep tabs on the notable skaters in the same division as his competing skaters, and South Korea’s rising star Seung Gil Lee had really been quite the dangerous competitor in Phichit’s quest for gold.

It wasn’t by luck that Seung Gil had clawed his way up to being one of the top skaters in the world.

Jumps were one of the elements where Seung Gil stood out most clearly from his peers with his stable execution and the three types of quads (toe loop, Salchow and loop) he’d been known to land consistently in competition. Celestino wouldn’t be surprised if he was already working on an even wider range of jumps that he had yet to reveal in competition. In addition to that his step sequences were polished and almost mechanically exact, graded as level 3 in the previous season and Celestino could very well see it being pushed up to level 4 with further refinement.

Of course, now that Seung Gil was officially training under him, Celestino’s resolve as a professional was to not be biased between his new and old students. In contrast, he anticipated that his two senior competitive skaters would be able to learn a lot from each other over the next few months. He’d likely bring up the possibility of bi-weekly joint lessons soon.

He gestured for Seung Gil to come closer and fixed the skater with a sharp considering stare.

“Alright, we’re done for today, but before I dismiss you, I think it’s important that we get on the same page right from the start. As your coach, I want to give you the best kind of support tailored to what you need. So I want you to tell me straight out, what do you want from this season?”

There was no hesitation in Seung Gil’s answer. “The Olympic gold.” He met Celestino’s stare unflinchingly, dark eyes piercing like sharpened flint. “Nothing less.”

Ambitious and didn’t mince words. He liked that. Celestino’s smile was satisfied as he held out his hand. Seung Gil’s responding handshake was brief but firm.

“I think we’ll deal very well together.”

Phichit skated up to Celestino as Seung Gil took back to the ice to continue practicing.

“He says it so confidently,” Phichit commented with a slight tone of wonder.

Celestino glanced at his older student, eyebrow raised. “You should be able to do the same. I expect nothing less from you, you know. Now stop taking photos of him and actually do your practice,” Celestino shot over his shoulder as he skated towards where the novice group was entering the rink.

Phichit laughed as he tucked his phone away. Guilty as charged.

He picked up speed as he skirted around the edge of the rink, running through a combination series of spirals to work on the smoothness of his transitions. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Seung Gil a beautifully clean triple Lutz triple toe loop combination.

…Olympic gold, huh.

 

* * *

 

If Seung Gil was completely honest, his decision to contact Celestino had been an impulse entirely unlike his usual self.

The part about him changing coaches between seasons wasn’t unexpected, at least not to anyone who’d been close enough to observe and likely many others as well. In an individual-oriented sport like singles’ figure skating, gossip travelled fast along the grapevines. He and his previous coach Min So had never gotten along well – been politely civil at best, and their disagreements had been numerous over the single year they’d worked together. She’d been highly recommended for her skills by his previous coach when the man retired, but unfortunately their personalities simply failed to mesh. It therefore came as no shock to either of them that he decided not to renew his contract with her when it ended in April.

He’d faced the reporters who descended on them with his customary stoicism, fielding questions with enough firmness to satisfy but avoiding details that could easily be blow out of proportion by the tabloids – ‘their decision to part was a mutual decision after careful consideration, no further comment’, ‘his plans for the next season were in the midst of discussions’, ‘no he was not retiring’, ‘he was keeping options open with both local and foreign coaches’, ‘yes of course he would still be skating for Korea no matter who he ended up training under’.

Even so, there were a fair number of acclaimed coaches in his own country who would be more than happy to take under their wing any skater with serious Olympic dreams, let alone South Korea’s current top men’s skater who’d successfully defended his gold for the past two years at the Korean Nationals. There had been no real practical reason to want an overseas-based coach, particularly with the troublesome relocation that would be involved with it.

No, practicality was for once not the primary consideration. In complete honesty, Seung Gil’s decision had been fuelled by a strong need to get out of South Korea, at least for the moment. He’d needed to get away, find a place where he could focus on purely training without vultures watching his every move.

The 2017-18 season was important, possibly the most crucial year of Seung Gil’s career as a competitive figure skater. The 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics was looming around the corner, to be held in February. On top of being held in his home country, the first time that a full-scale Olympic event had been hosted by South Korea since the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, Seung Gil was furthermore conscious that time was ticking on at a merciless rate.

Seung Gil was a realist, and knew there was no guarantee that his body would hold out for another four years until the next Olympic season. Sure, he was just twenty in the international age (twenty-one soon, in June) and there were skaters who continued far into their late twenties, but he knew they were the exceptions rather than the norm. A bad injury could take out even a skater in his prime in a matter of seconds, just like what had happened with China’s Cao Bin two years back at the Sochi Grand Prix.

There were too many athletes who finished their whole careers without ever reaching the top, and Seung Gil refused to be one of them.

His mistakes in his free program at the 2016 Rostelecom Cup had caused him to miss his chance to reach the Grand Prix Final, and while he’d made new personal bests in both his short program and free skate in the Four Continents, he’d still been edged out of the podium by Otabek Altin and placed fourth by a margin of 3 points. The further 20-points difference he had with both Yuri Katsuki who took gold and JJ who had gone toe-to-toe with him to snag silver was unacceptably large in Seung Gil’s eyes, and he’d thrown himself back into training in its aftermath.

Two months later, he’d placed seventh in Worlds.

Some people might call that a good ranking but Seung Gil hated the number.

Seventh in the world wasn’t enough – seventh meant that six people had been better than him, that six others had been acknowledged as better skaters. Seven was one number away from the number of skaters who could qualify for the Grand Prix Final.

It wasn’t by an arbitrary reason that Seung Gil had chosen ‘greed’ as his theme for last season. Greed was an emotion that he felt with every fibre of his being and he’d never cared to hide it.

He wanted more, more, more.

They were in a competitive sport, whoever said they didn’t have at least a little desire to be the best would be lying. Moreover, with the Olympics right around the corner, everyone’s tension would be at an all-time high to snatch up that prestigious Olympic gold.

Following the Grand Prix Final, he’d naturally re-watched Yuri Plisetsky and Yuri Katsuki’s respective record-breaking programs many times over to analyse their techniques. He analysed JJ as well, both his flawless performance at the Rostelecom Cup and the surprise quad loop he’d thrown in at the Final. It was part of his usual training routine after every major competition, to take note of each of the medallist’s performances.

He had no use for his competitors beyond observing what he could learn from them, using them as stepping-stones to improve his own skating and climb to the top. Or at least that was what he had thought before, until he’d watched the Grand Prix Final and witnessed a skater skating with his heart shining for all to see.

Phichit Chulanont was an enigma. There was something that kept drawing Seung Gil back to re-watch his programs, time and time again. With a total of only three quads across both programs, all of them toe loops, the Thai skater’s TES was a limiting factor even after GOE additions, especially when compared with the significantly higher base TES of his fellow finalists. Because of this he’d placed sixth in the Final, yet there was something mesmerizing about his skating that didn’t lose out a single bit to any of the medallists. It puzzled Seung Gil as much as it intrigued him.

He’d searched up Celestino Cialdini’s contact details on a whim, and before he knew it, he’d sent out an enquiry email, gotten a reply and communication had simply tumbled on from there until he found himself arriving at a residential address in Bangkok being greeted by a wide smile and warm eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments and kudos! Your feedback is always very much appreciated!


End file.
